Let’s Stop the Reboots, Please

I don't need to go back to the 90s, it's okay to acknowledge that it's 2018 y'all.

Guys, the 90’s was fun, so much fun that we’re actually doing a bracket about 90’s TV shows. Stay tuned for that information.

But seriously, the 90s were fun, but they have passed. They have already happened. We’ve got to let that go or else we will never be able to create new and beautiful things.

I get it, remembering the 90s takes us back to a time where the economy was strong, you went to college without accumulating $60k in debt, we didn’t have smartphones or social media (that we use to complain about those very things) and “everybody” was just happy.

It’s easier to deal with nostalgia compared to reality or to abide in the things you know and remember instead of trying to figure out why new things exist. I remember when I was younger, I used to roll my eyes every time my Mom would mention how when they were younger things were so much simpler, and how they had PE Teachers and Staff members at the playgrounds during the summertime, giving kids somewhere to go and be supervised instead of getting into trouble. I used to think to myself “MOM, IT’S NOT THE 60s ANYMORE” but I couldn’t say that cause a) Sheila don’t play that and b) I’d get popped one good, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve understood why that was important and why my Mom would harp on that. I understood it the more I yearned for my childhood and much simpler times, when “Living Single” would air and I wouldn’t get half the jokes cause I hadn’t lived those experiences yet, or when the theme song for Rugrats would come on and I’d rush over to watch it.

Those days are gone and I cannot recreate that.

Sure, I can watch those shows on Hulu, but that’s all I need. I’m not sure I want to revisit Khadija, Regime and them in a 2010s atmosphere, they wouldn’t be living together, and it wouldn’t be the same show.

That’s kind of the issue right now, we want these old characters from a bygone era to speak to us in terms we understand while still feeling “new” and “fresh”. You can’t go pickup shows like “Living Single” from where they left off because the cast is much older, you’d be forcing a narrative to bring them all back together. You can’t really revive “Rugrats” for another season when you consider how far the original fell off towards the end, there’s a reason it ended, and it’s not because “All Growed Up” came out. It’s because the quality of the program declined or the demographic moved on, a revisiting of this wouldn’t last very long if left untouched, because we would immediately notice why we left in the first place. If it’s changed from it’s original source, it’s going to be discarded by the original demographic. Very few animated shows make this work, the new “Ducktales” works where the new “Powerpuff Girls” doesn’t.

Now there are exceptions, there are programs who met their demise through the network or through unpopular means before they were concluded, or they can continue without ruining their narrative. An X-Files reboot, to an extent, makes sense. A Full House reboot, no matter how well it has worked, doesn’t.

I know there are exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions. A reboot is a risky move because it’s either a lazy money grab or will be seen as such unless it’s a one-off movie or a temporary series like the “Hey Arnold” movie and “Rocko’s Modern Life’ mini-series.

Reboots make you excited for a little bit, and then you see the new thing and realize that it’s not anything like you remember, and that’s what is the most disappointing of all.

It’s time to move on y’all. It’s time to embrace new content, the good and the bad.